Full Focus Limited
P O Box 33489
Takapuna, Auckland
t: 09 489 1650
f: 09 489 1650
David Martin: 0274 902 401
Kathy Martin: 027 2800 564
Recent Focus March 2008
Estimated reading time for this issue: under 5 minutes
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The Weekly Team Meeting ..... Do you have one?
(Don't think your business is too small for this .... two counts as a team!)
You’ll be amazed how many businesses we come across that don’t have a weekly meeting with their team. It’s fair to say some never have group meetings with their team at all .… let alone a weekly one. Sometimes the only time they all get together is at the Christmas party. Although this can be fun (and sometimes embarrassing for weeks after) it’s in no way going to replace a regular scheduled “team meeting”.
If you’ve never had weekly meetings try it for a while and see if it makes a difference. It doesn’t need to be a long meeting – one hour max. Getting your team together at the same time each week might feel impossible at first – but once 
the habit’s set you’ll find yourself and your team beginning to look forward to the meeting. Even if your company is small make sure you have a weekly team meeting – in my book two people counts as a team.
If you’re going to make this meeting productive and effective, it’s a good idea to have an agenda. Remember, as well as providing an update of where the company’s up to, it’s also an important opportunity to bring in some personal stuff – that’s how good teams are made.
Here’s a guideline for you:
Set the meeting up
These meetings are often about addressing challenges, what new stuff has to be done next week and what wasn’t done in the last week. This can sometimes feel like hard work. So set the meeting up by starting “upbeat”. Have everyone share one specific good thing that happened during the week (personal or business). As well as offsetting any negativity, it’ll help to get to know eachother and give everyone a pat on the back. At first this can feel a bit uncomfortable, but stick with it and make sure everyone takes part.
Reporting the Results
Go over the results for the week. Make sure your statistical reports are
standardised. Graphs are a great way to do this. Your team will be able to see the trend in the numbers and whether or not they are hitting targets.
Beware of targets that haven’t been met as this can cause a reaction within your team (not to mention you!). It’s a good idea to acknowledge the breakdown and it’s a great time to look at what can be done to remedy it – opportunities to build on it … what’s going to make the difference in the next week. But remember - this is not the place for “beating up” a team member that is repeatedly under-performing!
A note on reporting the results: Create some milestones along the way – don’t just wait until the end of the project for you and your team to celebrate!
Customers and Team
Review whether there are any recurring problems that your team or customers are dealing with. These can either be handled on the spot (if it’s an easy fix) or you’ll need to investigate it later (but not too much later) …. and make sure you let everyone know the outcome.
Brain
storm
If there’s a problem or something your business is grappling with – use the combined brainpower of your team. You’ll be amazed how many new ideas you’ll end up with ... and your team will feel pretty good about contributing in this way.
Finish on time
At the end of the meeting let everyone say a brief word or two that represents how they feel about the meeting. This gives everyone an opportunity to “complete” the meeting and move on.
Keep a record
Don't forget keep a record of who said they were going to do what and by when.
A suggestion on timing : Time your weekly meetings to occur just before a deadline (eg. lunchtime, 1 hour before closing, … or 1 hour before starting!) This will reduce the chances of running overtime.
News
MoreTime – Results Management 101 …… OneDay Workshops available soon!
At the end of last month we ran a one-off results management workshop …. MoreTime – Results Management 101. The purpose was to have the attendees experience and evaluate the Workshop for the intention of conducting in-house workshops for businesses. The day was a great success and full evaluation of the Workshop (by the participants) is due at the end of March. But here’s a few comments received on the day:
“An excellent review of many of the time management concepts that I was aware of ….”
“A useful and new approach to making the best use of time…”
“Brought together a lot of concepts and gave a blueprint for ways to work in the future”.
“Excellent workshop. Easy to understand. Highly practical. Beat the University of Auckland one to a pulp.”
“Really interesting and easy to put into practice”
“A great day and I can see a good number of my clients getting real value from it.”
We’ll keep you posted …... look out for this in our next newsletter.
Have your say
We’re always looking to improve what we’re up to and add benefit for our clients and the people we deal with.
Every month I look for a different topic that may interest our readers – this isn’t an easy job as the cross section of people this newsletter goes to is quite wide.
This month I thought I’d ask you what topics you’d like to see us cover in the coming months. But remember who we are …. independent advisors to business owners (with high expectations) ….. don’t suggest we write an informative and interesting newsletter on the 10 best ways to cook fish!
Click here to send a quick email with the topic you’d like to hear about, or any way you think we could improve Recent Focus. We always welcome feedback or suggestions.
Apology
Apologies to anyone who took offence at my last newsletter. I had a comment or two about the fact that I referred to a coach as a “he” not a "she" or a "he/she”.. or whatever else I was supposed to term the coach for political correctness. I am not, and have never been, very sensitive about such things. If I offended any readers this was not the intention …. it was simply easier to assign a gender to the business coach.
Do you know someone we might be able to assist? Please give them our contact details, refer them to our website, or provide us with details so we can contact them. Click here to see how we’ll handle your referrals
Read the previous issue of Recent Focus (Business coaches ... are they worth it?)
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